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When I spoke a word or whispered my fingertip down the undulations of her spine, how wet she’d become. I remembered this well.

I’d hidden. She’d found me.

A soldering iron applied to the surface of my brain couldn’t burn that day away – the day in Cuba when I met Wolfe and I met Red. Hot, sun-bleached air, and my power sparkling new.

Her real name? I’d forgotten it. Why bother asking, reading her passport, when she’d do anything for me, despite knowing nothing about me?

The first time I detected her, she smelled incandescent... like gold, like power, like money, like every barbaric, sadistic, perverted sexual act one human being could do to another.

I wanted her. Still did.

If I had her, the world would never be the same. She gave my monster permission to do things.

The paradox of a man who loves control being in a pe

rverse situation.

Cuba had been days after my fiancée left me on the eve of our wedding. Arranged for months. The invited had travelled from the UK and Sweden. Chaos spawned from her whim. She loved another. Hilariously devastating.

After the infection, the mesmer revelation, I cared nothing for her or her whim.

I’d thrown her cellphone in the sea.

Now? Red was up there, flying to me, probably to kill me.

I shifted my back on the deck chair and eyed Vitor where he played with one of my girls. She swayed, hands cuffed and caught in ropes attached to the ceiling of the patio. Below, the sea sloshed against the pylons. Beyond was blue water, a far and beautiful curve of sea, lined by beach and the square dots of houses. The mostly naked girl, clad in shreds of lingerie, rocked back and forth, jarred and made to squeak as he screwed himself into her ass. I kept Vitor happy with fucking and a second-hand power over what was mine.

Blood was dribbling down her inner thigh.

Years ago, becoming jaded had seemed ridiculous. I had my town by the sea, I had my collected ones, but the girls grew dull with use and I had my moments of morality.

Red...

Wolfe said he’d broken something in her to give me access to her head. Wolfe could grab almost any girl. To me and to most mesmers, only some females were susceptible. Red was different.

He’d snapped something inside her and it’d stayed snapped. Before releasing her, I tested her. There’d been risks with letting her go but Wolfe could go fuck himself. He wanted me to keep the little CIA agent and make her vanish so she couldn’t chase him. Since I was a novice mesmer, he thought I’d be eager for my first. And I had been. I was also smarter and stronger willed than most men.

My way had worked. Until today. Why else would she chase me except to kill me?

Three years had passed since Wolfe handed me the facts.

“You will be a monster, unless you’re careful.”

I didn’t want to be a monster controlled by an infection.

As a lawyer, logic took precedence. I lived control.

I took steps. Rigorous and repetitive steps.

Red was coming.

She was my talisman, my potential key. I’d pushed her away because I feared the unlocking. In a way that meant I feared the key but I hadn’t deduced that straight away.

Fear was a mind killer. I detested my own fear, even if I loved inducing fear in others.

I was comfortable, here, in my South American town, but I could be doing more. The world tantalized me.

If Red returned, I had that choice again to turn the key or throw it away.